City eyes plastic ban

THE CITY Government is looking into banning the use of plastic cellophanes to reduce waste and declog drainages to prevent flooding in the city.

This after Cagayan de Oro was flooded again in the past week.

City Administrator Teddy Sabuga-a said the ban on cellophanes will start within the City Hall premises in August.

Sabuga-a said he plans to issue a memorandum to the City Hall canteens to stop the use of cellophanes.

“Hopefully we can implement this in the whole city,” he said.

Meanwhile, in a press conference to open the National Disaster Resilience Month, the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) in Northern Mindanao vowed to help the city and other local government units to be disaster-resilient.

As of now, DOST has 111 equipment, namely the automatic rainwater gauges, water level sensor and weather stations spread all over the region particularly those near major river basins. This year, 11 sensors were added to various municipalities.

Alamban said aside from equipment which are immediate means to preventing disaster, its office also conducts medium-term and long-term research and development.

The medium term solution, Alamban said, is to stop using plastic.

“Ang Plastic makasampong sa atong drainage, source of baha (Plastic can clog the drainage and eventually be the source of flooding),” he said.

The international environment group Greenpeace in a recent report has ranked the Philippines as the “third-worst polluter into the world’s oceans” after China and Indonesia.

Greenpeace said plastic waste was a particularly serious problem in “sachet economies” like the Philippines and other developing countries, where people on limited incomes are pushed to buy cheap goods in small quantities.

In the Philippines, a country of 103 million people with high levels of poverty, products sold in single-use sachets include instant coffee, shampoo, cooking oil, food seasoning and toothpaste.

These low-value disposable sachets usually end up in landfill or as litter or marine debris, according to Greenpeace.